The Truth about the Sabbath

I grew up as a Seventh-day Adventist. Over the years as I have watched how those around me have kept the Sabbath. Most seemed to treat the Sabbath, along with the rest of the Decalogue, as a command from God given to test our obedience and worthiness for heaven. Consequently, the response has been fear-based: we have treated the Sabbath with a sense of obligation, and thus have observed it in a commercial way, trading obedience for reward and to keep from being punished. I can’t come to any other conclusion based on the actions of the Adventists I have known.

Is God Arbitrary?

This kind of divine commanding and moral trading doesn’t sound very free. The question that begs itself is that if God values nothing higher than our freedom, then why has He placed right in the heart of the “royal law of liberty” an arbitrary command to keep the Sabbath? Is it just a show of authority and power to test compliance? This question is underscored by Satan, who has pointed his finger at the intentions of God for a long time, making Them out to be despots; liars and killers who are vengeful, unforgiving, and severe. Is Satan right? Or is God telling the truth when He says He is an unconditional, other-centered lover, that He values nothing higher than our companionship and freedom?

The irony is that, although the Sabbath seems arbitrary, it is actually the star player in exonerating God on every point of Satan’s contentions. Let’s take a look:

Commands Can Be Misleading

At first glance it seems that to command love will destroy love. Just try commanding your spouse and see how long your marriage lasts. At the very least you will end up with a very unhealthy marriage. Yet although commands within peer relationships are counterproductive, it is clear that healthy children respond well to commands. This is because healthy children grow up in a atmosphere of trust.

The effectiveness of commands in child/parent relationships are dependent upon trust in the commander. Love is a decision based on trust, and a command will always produce rebellion where there is no trust. However, within a mentoring relationship of trust a command is an enabling to grow in love. Within this relationship the negative stigma of commanding disappears and is seen only as devotion to a revered mentor.

We will always be immature related to an infinite God—children really—and must be willing to obey when we don’t understand. This is faith, modeled by Jesus, and presupposes trust. As our trust in God strengthens, love is able to mature beyond childish commands.

The Sabbath Is a Divine Commitment

The Sabbath reveals more about God than about us. Like Graham Maxwell loved to say, “A Seventh-day Adventist is a Christian who accepts and believes all that the Sabbath has to say about our God.”

So what does the Sabbath (and the rest of the Decalogue, for that matter) say about God? In his captivating book on the Sabbath, Sigve Tonstad states his belief that the Sabbath is about a divine commitment instead of a divine commandment. This commitment reveals Their intent to participate with us in the free world of love and makes Them not only sovereigns, but lovers; not only hierarchs, but friends.

This is a breathtaking commitment where God does the unthinkable. In Jesus, They have exalted men to heights that most of us would almost consider sacrilege. The Holy Three have exalted us far higher than we will ever exalt Them. By including us in Their life They have exalted us from non-being to dirt—from dirt to Jesus—and then, in Jesus, to the right hand of the Father. From our perspective in time, Their Sabbath commitment to us was given right in the middle of that exaltation process, before Jesus had become our Brother. It was a divine covenant “calling those things which are not yet as though they were (Romans 4:17),” a covenant confirming the reality of what was yet to be: our unconditional inclusion into divine life (Romans 8:32).

This commitment reveals the stunning humility of the Trinity, Their willingness to share Their power, and yield to Their creation. They have not considered Their power and prerogative a thing to be hoarded, excluded, and kept to themselves (Philippians 2:6), but have planned and pledged from eternity to adopt us into their circle of life and, through Jesus, to make us gods within their Family.

To be clear, Jesus said that without Him we could do nothing, but with Him we could do all things. This is not about us becoming infinite gods in our own right. It is about human interpenetration with God so that Their infinity is shared with us, to the extent that we can understand and participate.

Of course, those who see such a breathtaking divine commitment in the Sabbath cannot help but respond in kind: exalting the Sacred Three and committing their lives to Them in return. Thus the Sabbath is also about our commitment to Them.

The Sabbath Defines Our Identity

With the Sabbath pledge the Trinity have exalted us by identifying us as eternal members of Their family. The Sabbath ratifies and ensures this identity. It is our awakening to the reality of such an unthinkable love and our enabling to return it.

When we come to understand that a transcendent God is willing, even covenantally committed, to stooping to have a relationship with us on our level, then we come to the truth about our identity and value. Our identity, then, is bound up in the Sabbath, for it is an active and continuing seal of God’s commitment to an intimate, interpenetrating relationship with us and to our limitless freedom, security, and potential within that relationship.

Thus the Sabbath is the doorway through which our identity and inheritance come to us, empowering us to possess our possessions in Christ.

The Sabbath and Rest

Believing God’s Sabbath pledge to us, trusting that Their covenant with us is real and that They have our back—come what may—brings us to a profound place of rest. There is no other place of rest in the world but in God’s Sabbath commitment, no other place to sleep—as Jesus did—though the storm. Rest is the sure indicator that we are viewing life from God’s perspective, imagining not only a future with Them but also a present.

The Sabbath and Our Freedom

Why is the Sabbath a citadel of freedom? God is said to be love and Their Sabbath commitment to us is therefore an expression of love. So the question we must ask is “Why is love free?”

Many of us have seen the Sabbath from a legalistic place, as something we have to do to assure that we will be rewarded instead of punished. God is an authoritarian who commands obedience or else. This could not be farther from the truth. This commercial perception is the result of taking the reins of freedom for ourselves. It hasn’t worked out very well for us. Exchanging relationship for commerce has certainly not made us free. There is no fellowship or rest in commerce—only competition, hierarchy, and domination.

Love is the other-centered interpenetration that is the prerequisite of life. Its nurturing spiritual flow opens up free spaces where life can move. This animates life in a revolving tension between the community and the individual, between presence and counterpart. The freedom of love is this social movement into another’s life and is done—amazingly—without the loss of personhood.

This fundamentally social nature of life spells death to those who refuse to play love’s game. Refusing to love removes the option of moving in any other space but our own. We close ourselves up in a friendless, joyless prison, cut off from the warmth, diversity, and twinkle of another perspective, another heart, another world. Where love reigns, locks and walls and bars and boxes and shadows cannot play their isolating games.

This is the freedom of love. It allows us freedom to go where we want, to pursue any passion—anywhere—because the realm of the other is our realm too: their heart is our heart, their passion is our passion, their spaces are our spaces. We embrace freedom, freedom to expand outside of ourselves and explore new worlds, to romp through the infinite summer pomps of another heart, to dive into the abyss of love, to embark with kindred spirits on adventures far beyond the the suffocating, lifeless coffin of “I.”

This is the freedom of love within the Trinity, and this is the freedom of Their Sabbath proposal that we have the privilege to accept and of Their life with which we may choose to align ourselves.

The Womb of the 7th Day

In a cosmos where relationship is the foundation of reality it should not be surprising that our interaction with others is capable of altering space and time—even matter. Experiments done in quantum physics confirm this:

  • Things exist or not depending on whether they are observed
  • When particles become “entangled,” a change in one will affect a change in the other, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe
  • Future interactions change the past

Its like a relationship is more important than a day (time) or a thing (matter), like perhaps our relationship with God, others, and the universe is not a reaction to reality but a creation of it. If this is true, then the creation of the physical universe may be dependent on the viability of relationships, particularly on our participation with God in Their life. Since the truth of our being—our identity—is in the life of the Trinity we are in the process of becoming until we see that truth, respond to Their invitation, and become interpenetrated with Them.

The consummation of our creation is symbolized by the 7th day, for what else could create the reality of us—making us viable and bringing us to term—but a rendezvous with the Lord, indeed the Mother, of the Sabbath. Everything in the process of creation in our physical universe is not only consummated in the the 7th day Sabbath but also surrounded—en-wombed—by it. Paul spoke clearly about this:

All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us. Any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy (Romans 8:22-25 MSG).

Paul often refers to this womb, as if “in God we [actually do] live and move and have our being,” as if “the kingdom of heaven [actually] is at hand,” as if “we are [truly] already seated in heavenly places with Them.” Thus it seems that the time and space of our universe is not only penetrated by the timeless 7th day but surrounded by it too.

Creation In Process

Though it seems like the six days of creation are a cut and dried event that happened in antiquity, we know that creation was in process until Jesus came because Paul calls Jesus the firstborn of all creation. Jesus also confirmed this when He said, “My Father is working until now and I am working (John 5:17).” That sounds like the process of creation to me.

Yet perhaps the most amazing thing is that even though the Lord of the Sabbath pronounced creation finished 2000 years ago, the physical universe is a bubble of space and time. Indeed, from our perspective, the 6 days of Creation are still in process—en-wombed in the eternal “I Am” of the 7th day—until all of mankind come to the Sabbath or not, until all of us choose whether or not to be born.

The Sabbath Is Home

The Sabbath was incarnated and the “it is finished” that heralded the end of creation and the beginning of the 7th day is God’s proof of paternity. Thus Jesus—the Sabbath incarnate—is the greatest testament to who our parents are and where our home is. History is witness to the fact that we are all a part of the Holy Family—children of God—and where is home but where your mommy and daddy are?

However, though a child cannot choose his or her parents, they can disown them. Consequently, in order to participate in the reality of our adoption in Christ we must acknowledge God’s proof of paternity, not just the DNA but experientially—intertwining, intermingling, interpenetrating—like happens in close families. For those who do, the Sabbath really is home—right here, right now—just like a womb.

The Sabbath Is a Person

Far from being a commandment like the Sabbath we may have grown up with and far more than a chunk of time or space, the Sabbath is a Person. Sabbath is an incarnate Divine Commitment to give us an eternal place in God’s life, a free space to play, laugh, create, and rest. As a person, the Lord of the Sabbath shows us the truth about God’s identity and ours, reminding us of who They are and who we are.

The Sabbath Cinches the Truth about God

When all intelligent beings see—in Jesus—the extent of the divine commitment of Sabbath, when the death of the Lord of the Sabbath definitively tells the truth about trust and love and death and family and freedom, when God’s Day of Rest is contrasted with the slavery of the commerce that men have set up in its place, and when they contemplate upon the object lessons in our world proving Satan wrong (such as God’s willingness to share His creative power with mankind), then God’s character will be exonerated, and it will be seen at last that it was the Sabbath that cinched the truth all along.


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